Archived News:

Friday, Oct 26, 2012

IGP (settle down Juggalos, that's Infinite Game Publishing) and Piranha Games announce an October 29th start date for the recently delayed open beta testing of MechWarrior Online:

Infinite Game Publishing (IGP) and Piranha Games announced today that MechWarrior Online is set for Open Beta next week on October 29. MechWarrior Online, one of 2012’s most anticipated titles, has been lauded by fans and the games media as the return of true mech combat. Recently the companies jointly announced that the MechWarrior Online Founder’s Program achieved more than $5 million dollars in sales since July.

Set in the year 3049 during the early stages of a massive interstellar war, MechWarrior Online puts you in command of the most powerful war machine to ever walk the field of battle, the mighty BattleMech™. Command your Mech and customize it to suit your battlefield role; upgrade systems, replace weapons, and tweak armor with endless options.

The Unknown Worlds Website has news that Natural Selection 2 will boast an additional map that's not part of the beta when the action/strategy sequel launches next week on Halloween. If that makes it sound like this map is a rush job, nothing could be farther from the truth, as they explain it "has been under construction for over two years." They offer some screenshots of the map, and detail all they had to change over the course of that time to get it into a state they are happy with. Thanks Joao.

Steam News has details on a new patch that's now automatically available for Hotline Miami, addressing some issues in the just-released action game. Word is the single-player campaign now operates as intended, though they say a controller fix is awaiting the next update. Also, Shacknews notes the Steam Community Forums have word from co-developer Dennis Wedin on DLC plans (thanks nin). He says: "If people enjoy the game and want more we have a storyline driven DLC in the plans with new characters and diving further in the story!!!"

The Ghost Recon Online Website announces this online installment in this Tom Clancy shooter series is now up to version 0.9.0 with the addition of a new patch that adds Phase 1 of the game's Clan Feature, as well as some Halloween-themed content, explaining: "In GRO, we're not just about shooting people in the face but we're also about celebrating holidays."

This Kickstarter from Zero Point Software looks to raise $600K for development of Interstellar Marines: Prologue, which encompasses the back story for their planned trilogy of Interstellar Marines multiplayer shooters (thanks Morrow). Here's word:

Equipped with the latest in weapons and gadgets you, in cooperation with fellow candidates, will train and improve your skills in large underground training environments, ranging from shooting ranges to artificially staged hostage and first contact scenarios, all supervised by the all-encompassing AI SARA that makes sure every battle is different!

Soldak Entertainment offers new patches on this page to update the Windows and OS X betas of Drox Operative to version 0.928. Word is: "This patch has a few balance changes, some useful UI tweaks, and a bunch of fixes." The change list has more details.

This is the launch trailer for Need for Speed Most Wanted, showing off the next installment in the action/racing series. Word is: "Buckle up, hit the gas and hold on tight; you’re in for the ride of your life. In Most Wanted, you’ll experience dream cars, the way you always wanted them. No tracks and no simulation. It’s about taking your ride to the limit and beyond, nailing perfect 200 mile-an-hour drifts, slamming your friends off the road, outsmarting the cops and getting away with it in style." Continue here to read the full story.

Indie Royale now offers its latest collection of flexibly priced independent games in a Halloween Bundle themed towards next week's spooky holiday. As usual, customers can opt for a bargain and choose the lowest price, or pay a higher price and lower the cost for the cheapskates who follow. The spooky bundle is composed of these five games: Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse (full season), Home, Pathologic, MacGuffin's Curse, and EvilQuest. There is also a bonus for their top contributor: "The Top Purchaser for the Halloween Bundle will get the previously sold out HOME: Old-School Collector's Edition."

Gearbox Software Support now offers updated patch notes for a new version 1.1.3 update that's now available for Borderlands 2, Gearbox Software's role-playing shooter sequel (thanks nin). This addresses a couple of bugs and performance issues, and also adds an option to reset your challenge progress while retaining your badass rank:

Added the ability to reset all challenge progress for a character once they've completed 85% of all non-DLC, non-area-specific challenge levels. This will keep the player's current challenge bonuses and rank, but reset all challenge progress to 0 and allow challenges to be re-completed for additional ranks and bonuses. Resetting is available on the "challenges" screen of the status menu and will display as a tooltip at the bottom of the screen if the player has met the criteria.

Speaking of Borderlands 2, the Gearbox Software Community Website now offers a schedule for five SHiFT code giveaways to be conducted today and tomorrow for the first-person RPG/shooter. These codes can be redeemed for Golden Keys, and this page includes an outline of how this works. Here's when the giveaways will occur:

Rockstar Games announces a multiplayer event to be held later today in Max Payne 3, offering mask unlocks on all platforms, and a chance to play with the developers on Xbox 360. Online play will also earn players triple XP all weekend in the third-person shooter sequel:

Join us tomorrow, Friday October 26th from 4-7pm ET / 9pm-midnight BST, for a special Halloween edition of the Social Club Multiplayer Events series where you can unlock a freaky all-new Demonic Skull head item for Max Payne 3 Multiplayer in keeping with the spirit of the season. We'll be playing on Xbox LIVE; however, players across all three platforms will be able to join their respective Social Club Multiplayer Event Playlists in-game to unlock the Demonic Skull as seen above. TRIPLE XP will also be live on all three platforms, right through the weekend.

In addition to the Demonic Skull, we're also unlocking the Day of the Dead Skull as a special bonus exclusive to all members of our veterano Founder Crews. If you have a Founder Crew as your Active Crew, or you have played at least one full game in the 26th October Social Club Playlist, check out the Head Items section of your Multiplayer Loadouts after 4pm tomorrow to access the Skulls (you may need to exit to the main menu of Max Payne 3 and then return to Multiplayer in order to see them). Skulls do not award any bonus abilities, but they do look awesome!

Firefly Studios announces plans to release Space Colony HD on November 8th, which will offer an updated version of this space simulation first released in 2003. This follows the recent announcement of plans to release Stronghold HD and Stronghold Crusader HD on November 1st, providing a similar update to their castle building franchise. Among other changes, all three games will now support resolutions as high as 2560x1600.

World of Warcraft keeps dropping fixes like they're hot, as the official website for Blizzard's MMORPG outlines another batch of hotfixes applied since the version 5.0.5 patch went live. This time around is mostly bug-fixes, and no class balance changes are involved. Also, the Diablo III Website has details on a new patch that's now live, updating the action/RPG sequel to version 1.0.5a with a few bug fixes.

Well it turned out the mea culpa I offered the other day accepting partial responsibility for the haywire advertising here was incorrect: Our ad provider told me that some older code from another source was at fault for the takeover ad some were experiencing, but after apologizing to you and looking into this, I found this to not be the case, so it was entirely on them. As you may have noticed, we've been running ad-free since then, as I removed all those codes once it became clear they were not able to determine the source of the issue. I have some new ad codes to insert from a provider we have worked with in the past, and though I don't anticipate any problems with these, please do let me know if they cause any once they go up. And once again, allow me to thank those of you willing to put up with this, as I know that this is the only site whitelisted on many of your ad-blockers. Hopefully this is the last of all this for the time being.